While discussing the impending Predator: Badlands with BAFTA’s YouTube channel, writer & director Dan Trachtenberg delved into one of the earlier concepts that was explored for what made Dek impaired in the eyes of the Predator culture – he was originally conceived of as blind.
I will tell you, the first instinct that we have initial treatments of was always that he was going to be the runt of the litter. But he was… I cannot believe I’m just remembering this, he was blind. And I was sort of thinking of Blind Fury or Book of Eli and, you know, the Blind Samurai, or Daredevil even. And though he was blind and seen as the runt, he developed extra sensory things. I even have previz for some of this stuff where he had a mask, that was just over his eyes that wasn’t covering his full face. And it allowed him to use echolocation and allowed him to use the clicks to, see, so to speak, where things were. He was going to lose that mask and have to overcome that and all of that.
Remanents of this concept seemed to have still made it into production, as during the set visits that took place while filming was still happening, multiple outlets referenced being blind in one eye. Discussing why he ultimately moved away from Dek being visually impaired, Trachtenberg wanted the audience to be able to fully experience Genna, the Planet of Death.
And then what happened was I started to realise… I love it when the audience feels linked to the main character, and we’re going to this new planet. And to take advantage of that characteristic of his, I really wanted it — I felt compelled, as I was sort of coming up with how we would shoot certain things, felt compelled to do stuff that would make you feel like you’re not seeing also what he’s not seeing, but that was really fighting against; we’re going to this new crazy planet together, and then we’re not going to be able to experience it and see it.
And so that forced us to start to think of like, “okay, what if it’s not the blind thing? What if there’s just this other” — and really just became size and stature and the clan, that kind of thing. He [Dimitrius] was in a full body suit just with an open cowl, and he wore contacts. And so the facial performance is almost entirely digital. It’s driven by Dimitrius. But then, of course, took a lot of VFX artistry to translate what he was doing into a face that has mandibles in it and things that are very unhuman like, and yeah, it’s the first time we ever did this in the Predator franchise.
Throughout the production of all of Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator films, he has made no secret of the fact that he’s a big gamer. Speaking further to the influences on Predator: Badlands, Trachtenberg name checked Monster Hunter, Prince of Persia, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and Shadow of the Colossus.
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Honestly a full grown, crazy threatening antagonist Predator, that is also blind and that uses different technology to help him hunt, sounds really awesome. Kind of glad they kept it simpler here, but it's a cool idea to maybe explore later.
I would like to see a blind predator in a movie where it's the antagonist, you could even subvert some of the ways that the previous protagonists defeated their predators by showing that they don't affect it, like the mud being useless because it already can't see but it can hear the person instead and they can even bring back the heart beat sense from Predators, but this time it would be related to its hearing instead of a different vision mode.
I guess that makes this the first bit of concept art that we've seen!
Shame we aren't getting an art book...